The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Does anyone remember the Tale of Peter Rabbit where Peter, forbidden by his mother to go near Mr. McGregor’s garden, cannot resist the temptation and ventures there anyway, gorging on vegetables until he is spotted and chased by Mr. McGregor, leaving his jacket and shoes behind in the process? Mr. McGregor then uses them to dress a scarecrow in his garden, and Peter returns home exhausted and ill.

Surrounding our acreage here in the country we have neighbours on three sides and a few simple rules for our children. They have 25 acres, a pond, tree fort and animals to play with and the rules are simple: stay on the property, don’t litter and treat the animals with kindness and respect. This was just too much restriction for our Peter Rabbit (my son Jack, then aged 13), and his friend, and the temptation of Farmer Brown’s pond to the south of us held unexplored possibility.

I had gone out for the afternoon the day Jack had his friend Justin over, but my husband Tom was home, doing work outside around the property. The afternoon passed, and Justin went home, but as Tom tells it, late afternoon, the dust of a pickup truck going at great speed could be seen from the road and when the truck came hurtling down our driveway, Tom stopped his work and came over to see what the emergency was. A very irate farmer Brown screeched to a stop beside Tom, rolled down the window and dangled out a very large, bright orange, sized 12 flip-flop. “Do you know anyone who might own this?” he snarled. I gulped as Tom recounted the story, because I knew instantly, being the person who purchased said sized 12 flip flop just recently, knew it belonged to Jack. “I found this down by my pond. There were two boys throwing carrots into the pond”. He liked to scatter carrots around the pond for the deer to feed on. Tom wasn’t quite sure what happened, but was putting the pieces together and managed to placate farmer Brown and send him less angrily on his way.

Jack’s punishment was a phoned apology to our neighbour and to go back, clean up the mess and fish the carrots out of the pond. Never having had officially met before, much to Jack’s horror and embarrassment, they got a chance one morning during a family breakfast at our local diner when in walked farmer Brown. Jack could barely raise his eyes from his plate of bacon and eggs to say hello but farmer Brown was surprisingly pleasant and good natured with Jack, perhaps remembering his days as a young lad. Unless of course he was working on a new scarecrow complete large orange flip flop.